parting word of her forthwith.

The woman who corresponded with Buonaparte, and consoled the
prisoner of St. Helena with black currant jam, was no
ordinary personage. Most people, I fancy, were afraid of
her. Her stature, her voice, her beard, were obtrusive marks
of her masculine attributes. It is questionable whether her
amity or her enmity was most to be dreaded. She liked those
best whom she could most easily tyrannise over. Those in the
other category might possibly keep aloof. For my part I
feared her patronage. I remember when I was about seventeen
- a self-conscious hobbledehoy - Mr. Ellice took me to one of
her large receptions. She received her guests from a sort of
elevated dais. When I came up - very shy - to make my
salute, she asked me how old I was. 'Seventeen,' was the
answer. 'That means next birthday,' she grunted. 'Come and
give me a kiss, my dear.' I, a man! - a man whose voice was
(sometimes) as gruff as hers! - a man who was beginning to
shave for a moustache! Oh! the indignity of it!

But it was not Lady Holland, or her court, that concerned me
in my school days, it was Holland Park, or the extensive
grounds about Charles Fox's house (there were no other houses
at Addison Road then), that I loved to roam in. It was the
birds'-nesting; it was the golden carp I used to fish for on
the sly with a pin; the shying at the swans, the hunt for
cockchafers, the freedom of mischief generally, and the
excellent food - which I was so much in need of - that made
the holiday delightful.